


Handle Me With Care

by amythis



Series: Lenny Is a Rock Star [5]
Category: Laverne & Shirley (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Menopause, Other Ships Not Mentioned in Tags, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 03:33:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29429598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amythis/pseuds/amythis
Summary: A year in a bunch of lives, as "the girls" turn fifty but continue to expect the unexpected, including Lenny getting to be part of a rock supergroup.
Relationships: Laverne DeFazio/Lenny Kosnowski, Richie Cunningham/Shirley Feeney
Series: Lenny Is a Rock Star [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1875079
Comments: 46
Kudos: 4
Collections: Lenny is a Rockstar 'Verse





	1. New Year's Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Missy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/gifts).



> This is set after most of the other stories in this 'verse.

Laverne couldn't sleep. She had the TV on low. An hour ago, she and Lenny had watched Dick Clark do his last countdown of 1987. Their youngest two were too little to stay up beyond the turn of midnight at Times Square, and Frankie thought Dick Clark was "an old cornball dweeb." As for the oldest two, they were at a UCLA frat party.

"Mom, it's not going to be like _Animal House_ or something. It'll just be a bunch of preppies in popped collars getting drunk and talking sports and Intro to Philosophy, just like in Boston, but with less hockey and more surfing."

"I can see why you want to go."

"Meghan is my best friend and it's my only chance to catch up with her with all her relatives in town."

"OK, but why do you have to drag your sister along?"

"If I don't, Josie's going to spend the rest of Winter Break crying over her break-up with stupid Tommy Milligan. She needs to see that there are other assholes in the sea."

"Maybe I don't want my innocent, romantic, heartbroken sixteen-year-old spending the evening with drunk assholes."

"I'll look after her, like always."

Tracy was a good big sister, although her relationship with Josie was different than with their kid brother, or their half-siblings. The two of them had gone through parts of life, including life with parents who got divorced, that the others, even Frankie, couldn't understand. Tracy and Josie had fought over television shows and music and the meaning of life, and they'd cried on each other's shoulders, although Tracy was much less of a crier. Tracy still made Josie laugh harder than anyone could, even Laverne, and Josie listened patiently if enviously to her older sister's adventures, including backpacking through Europe last summer.

In Tracy's absence, particularly after she started at Wellesley in the fall, Josie became honorary oldest, but she had always been more of "the little mother" type, happy to babysit when Tracy had plans, and Tracy almost always had plans. It was ironic that Tracy, who in high school considered following in her father's lawyer footsteps, now was, as she put it, "as undeclared as luggage."

Josie wanted to open a bakery someday, which made her half-siblings adore her even more. She was starting to look into local cooking schools and planned to either live at home or visit often.

Frankie at thirteen loved music, but not the same music as his parents and stepfather did. He learned a lot from Lenny but he planned to make his own way.

Laverne hadn't had any ideas for the future when she was a teenager. She wanted to live in the moment and have fun. She figured she'd get married and have kids eventually, but that depended on meeting the right guy. She started working at Shotz Brewery when she was about Tracy's age, because that was a good job for a girl who was never good at school, and who liked beer. She drifted through other jobs for the next dozen years, until the job of motherhood filled her days. She didn't figure out what she wanted to be when she grew up until she was pushing forty.

Laverne looked at the clock and shook her head. She always swore she wouldn't be an overprotective parent like Pop, but that didn't mean she didn't worry.

The phone rang and she leapt for it, and not just because she didn't want it to wake anyone up. "Hello?" she said, hoping she sounded calm, even if this might be the hospital or the police station.

"Sorry to call so late, Laverne."

"It's not that late out here, Shirl," she said, thinking for the hundredth time how odd it was that a New Yorker like herself had spent almost half her life in California, while Midwestern Shirley had, after going as far east as Germany, eventually ended up in New England.

"Right, the time difference."

"Yeah, and I couldn't sleep."

"The night sweats again?" Shirley murmured sympathetically.

Laverne had told her best friend some of her menopause symptoms. After all, Shirley was a doctor, although none of her patients menstruated.

"Not lately."

"Any other symptoms?"

Laverne really didn't feel like talking about what her actual OB/GYN called "a depressed libido." She and Lenny used to be so hot for each other, no matter what her time of the month, or stage of pregnancy or nursing. He was still as horny for her at fifty as he'd been at fifteen, although his recovery time wasn't even what it was when they first got together at thirty-eight. But, while she still loved Lenny like crazy and thought _People_ magazine ranked him too low as the ninth sexiest rock star of his generation, she just didn't feel like having sex with him lately. Lenny was sweet and patient about it, which only made it worse.

"Is this what you called for, to give me a checkup?"

"No, I need to tell you something."

Laverne curled up in a ball, remembering the last time Shirley said that. "Good or bad?"

"Confusing. I kissed Richie Cunningham."

Laverne laughed in relief. "I know. In '57, '58, and '76."

"And '87 going into '88."

"Wait, you kissed him tonight? Where?"

"On the lips of course."

"No, in Westport or New York?" Shirley sometimes went into The City, and maybe Richie had to meet with his publisher or something. Laverne pictured Richie and Shirley separately going to see Dick Clark, running into each other, and kissing at midnight, that precious New York minute, four hours ago.

"Neither. I took Kitty to see her grandmother over the holidays."

"You're in California and you didn't tell me?" Laverne couldn't keep the hurt out of her voice.

"No, no, Vernie, I'm in Milwaukee."

Laverne's voice dropped to a whisper for "You're calling me on Carmella Ragusa's phone to tell me about kissing someone?"

"No, I got a mobile phone. It helps me in my work, so I can be reached even when I'm not at home. Like a pager but better."

"Oh yeah, Squiggy's got a cell phone." Like its owner, it was thick as a brick, but the founder and chairman of the Squignowski Talent Agency of California (STAC) flourished it on any and every occasion.

"I know. On Christmas he called me for advice about his moth. His pet I mean, not his daughter."

Not for the first time, Laverne stopped herself from pointing out that Shirley had named her own daughter after a stuffed animal. Instead, she got back to the girl talk. "So you kissed Richie in Milwaukee?"

"Yes, at Fonzie's New Year's party."

"That freaking matchmaker!"

"No, no, he had already invited Richie when they saw each other for Christmas at the Cunninghams'. Then he invited me when I called to say I'm in town. But there were lots of other people there."

"Like who?"

"Oh, Al and Louisa Delvecchio, Jenny Piccalo and her new husband, Ralph and Leather Malph...."

"See? He thinks he's fucking Chuck Woolery!"

"Laverne," Shirley scolded automatically.

"So is it a love connection?"

Laverne could hear the blush in Shirley's voice. "It's too much to go into right now and my minutes are going to run out soon. But I just didn't want to spring all this on you in my next letter."

"God, you are such a tease, Shirley Ragusa!"

"Then go take a cold shower."

Laverne wanted to confess about her libido problem, but even if they'd had the time, she was suddenly distracted by an offkey rendition of Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance with Somebody."

"Is that...?"

"Gotta go, Shirl. My little darlings are home."

"Good luck."

"Thanks." Laverne hung up as the front door opened on her two eldest, the taller one supporting the one who was swaying a little.

She stood up but before she could say anything, a stern voice said, "Young Ladies, do you know what time it is?"

"No, do you?" Tracy taunted.

The almost six-year-old, with eyebrows uncannily like his grandpop's, scanned the room until he found the digital clock. "One one five!" he cried triumphantly.

"Good job, Jak. Now do it in analog."

John Andrew Kosnowski looked confused, but before he could ask anything else, a blur in Strawberry Shortcake pajamas, long blonde hair flying like a flag, tackled her big sisters. Lilly's family nickname was Hug Monster.

As for her given name, Laverne and Lenny had wanted to call their youngest "Shirley," but Dr. Ragusa said, "I kind of want to be the only Shirley in your lives."

So Laverne had joked, "Then we'll call her after your mother, since I named Josie after mine."

("Tracy" was because one of Laverne's first dates with Lee Levy was a showing of _Adam's Rib_ at his law school. A boy would've been Spencer, but by the time their third kid was born, Pop was strongly hinting that even if it was another girl, he expected a Frankie.)

"Lillian Kosnowski, I like that."

Laverne had half forgotten what "Barb" Feeney's real name was. Lenny thought it was great, especially since "you could put L's on her clothes, Laverne." Her first four kids were different enough in size and style, Laverne had never bothered with monograms, but yes, there was a cursive L right above Strawberry's hat.

"Careful, Kiddo, Josie's already a little dizzy," the oldest told the youngest.

"She smells funny," the three-year-old observed.

"Everything all right in here?"

Laverne looked over at the tall man in plaid pajamas, his thinning blond hair already messy from sleep. Her heart still leapt at the sight of him, after all these years.

"You get the little two and I'll deal with the big two."

Lenny nodded, knelt, scooped up his son, and put the chunky boy on his shoulders. His elf-like daughter squealed, "Daddy!" and leapt into his arms.

As Lenny carefully rose to his feet, his wife couldn't help asking with amusement as much as concern, "Are you gonna be OK?"

"This would've been a lot easier if you had said yes the first time I asked, before I was middle-aged."

Laverne heard Josie loudly whisper, "The first time he proposed, Trace, the time he thought she was, you know."

"Yeah, I got that, JoJo."

Lenny blushed but distracted the little kids by launching into one of his improvised bedtime stories, sort of like he used to tell Squiggy when they were roommates.

Laverne waited until the door to the former nursery was closed before she said, "So did you girls have a good time tonight?"

Josie had one arm wrapped around her sister's shoulders, and she now slung the other arm around her mother's shoulders. She took after the DeFazio side of the family and was about the height of her Brooklyn great-grandmother. Laverne was as tall as her own late mother, while Tracy took after Lee and was still growing at five nine. They had to stoop a little to support the girl who now said, "Mommy, did you know that college boys kiss different than high school boys?"

"It's been a long since I've kissed either," Laverne said as she started to steer them through the living room towards the hallway. "How many college boys did she kiss?"

"Just one," Tracy answered, "at midnight."

"You have to kiss at midnight, Mommy. It's tradition."

Laverne thought of Shirley, then asked, "And how many college boys did Tracy kiss tonight?"

Tracy answered for herself, "One before midnight, to be my last kiss of '87, and one after midnight, to be my first kiss of '88. At midnight, I was looking after my kid sister, like I promised."

"Uh huh. And how much did your kid sister have to drink?"

"One can of Shotz, Mommy, because that's what you used to drink."

Laverne felt guilty, especially since she at sixteen had needed more than one beer to get this smashed. It figured that Josie would be a lightweight, like Shirley. Laverne glanced over at Tracy, who shrugged as well as she could with Josie clinging to her.

"I didn't know," Tracy said, and Laverne didn't know if she meant that Josie would get drunk so easily, or that Josie had a beer. Then Tracy added, "I didn't have anything, you know, designated driver."

Laverne was grateful for that at least. She guided her daughters to their room, glad the door was open.

She managed to change Josie out of the big-shouldered, pink party dress and into a long, floral nightgown, thinking of the little girl in overalls and tutus. Tracy offered to help, but Laverne said, "I got this."

By the time Laverne had her middle daughter tucked in, her oldest daughter was sitting with her long legs in blue pajamas that dangled off the side of the bed.

"Are you going to ground us, Mommy?" Josie asked sleepily.

Laverne smoothed the dark, naturally curly hair, thinking of how the Eighties perms meant that in this regard Josie was effortlessly fashionable, despite her sweet, round face. "I think your hangover will be punishment enough." She looked over at Tracy and said, "As for you, My Dear, you can take care of her tomorrow morning."

Tracy nodded. "Deal."

Laverne kissed both foreheads, exchanged goodnights, and gently shut the door as she left. Then she continued down the hallway.

When her middle child turned twelve, Lenny had separate talks with his stepson and then his wife. It was agreed that from then on everyone would knock before entering Frankie's room. His big sisters regarded "The Cave" with the same disgust Shirley used to view Lenny and Squiggy's bachelor apartments and they seldom visited, although they adored their kid brother as much as they had when he obligingly joined their tea parties in thrift store costume jewelry and feathered hats as "Mrs. Wintergreen." They knew that the preschool dowager was now a teenage boy and couldn't help being disgusting.

As for Frankie's half-siblings, Lilly, like her father, was slow to learn about personal boundaries, although Laverne was working on it, while still giving her baby space to stay loving and affectionate. Jak, every time he dropped in on his only brother, looked like he had a search warrant, although, as far as Laverne knew, there was nothing more controversial in the black-lit room than a set of Dungeons & Dragons manuals.

There was no answer to Laverne's knock now, so she carefully turned the unlocked doorknob. Once her eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw the still surprisingly long form of the child who had formerly been the youngest for seven and a half years. Lee was taller than Lenny, and Frankie was already his mother's height.

His eyelids were closed but he was the only one to get Lee's wood-brown eyes. His frizzy blond hair had elements of brown and red, like hers, but none of the gray of course.

He had headphones on and she couldn't tell if he had heard her come in or was even awake. Then he opened his eyes and smiled, showing the braces that Lee insisted on paying for. (Josie recently had graduated from her retainer. Tracy was lucky enough not to inherit Laverne's overbite. Jak was at the Tooth Fairy stage, and Lilly definitely had all her baby teeth.)

"Hi, Mom. You wanna listen?" Frankie took off the headphones and held them out to her.

"Yeah, OK." She knew it wouldn't be Salt-N-Pepa or Bon Jovi, like Tracy would've offered, nor Josie's adult contemporary or golden oldies. It wouldn't even be what his preteen Dungeonmaster, Moth Squiggman, loved to annoy her father with: the Iron Thamesmen, England's loudest band.

Laverne pulled over the chair from Frankie's desk, sat down, and took the headphones. After over a decade of marriage to a musician, it was a familiar ritual. Listening to Lenny's music always felt like coming home, even when it was raw and unfinished. Her son's music was always startling, like visiting another world. But, although she treasured the family resemblances in her brood, she loved that she had brought forth five individuals.

Frankie's latest composition sounded a little like Philip Glass and a little like some of John Lennon's weirder collaborations with Yoko Ono. (She remembered the six-year-old boy who had sobbed over the death of the man who said, "Fabrizio, eh? I'm going to call you 'Fab' for short.") There were other influences she couldn't place, despite all she'd learned about instrumental music in the past couple years. This wasn't catchy, but its swirls and squawks fascinated her.

When Frankie paused the tape, she took off the headphones and handed them back to him. She shook her head and asked, "How did someone as tone deaf as me get such a musical kid?"

"Must've been all those eight-tracks."

She laughed, mussed his hair further and said, "Get some sleep, Fab."

"OK, Mrs. K. And Happy New Year."

"You, too."

She made sure to shut the door firmly when she left, then made her way to the nursery. There was music in this room, too, the a capella baritone she loved best, its seductiveness turned off and its tenderness turned up. 

"...So sleep, My Babies, don't you fear. Papa's gonna get you through another year."

Laverne approached as quietly as she could, but Jak's green eyes snapped open and he demanded, "What's their punishment?"

"That is between me and your big sisters, RoboCop."

Buttercup eyelashes fluttered like butterflies, revealing Kosnowski baby blues. "Mommy, you haven't hugged or kissed me all year!"

"I am the worst mommy in town."

Lilly giggled and held out her tiny but strong arms. Laverne gave her a big hug and kiss, and then a milder but still warm goodnight to the kindergarten cop. Jak endured both parents' affection stoically, and Laverne just managed to not crack up at the _All part of the job_ expression on the freckled face after Lenny's kisses on both chubby cheeks. Lilly of course adored her father, as she had since she clung to his thumb the first time she suckled her mother hungrily.

If the Levy girls were, as Shirley put it, "us but not," and Frankie was Carmine, in the sense of definitely being part of the pack but sometimes off to the side, Laverne's Kosnowski kids were a fun-house version of "the boys." While Squiggy's only child got his verbosity and cynicism, his godson got his judginess and his inability to cope with soft emotions, although Laverne had definitely never locked John Andrew in a closet, forcing him to befriend moths. She had originally thought naming him after the late John Lennon would've balanced the Squigginess with some Sixties whimsy, but Lennon had his sanctimonious and angry sides, too.

And Lilly was a happy-girl version of the needy little boy whose mother abused, neglected, and then abandoned him. Unlike Lenny, she was growing up surrounded by love, but that just made her greedier for it.

There was a time when Laverne had actually hoped for more than five kids, despite what fifteen-year-old Walter Meeney, Jr., had lectured her about the planet. She and Lenny were together four and a half years and had a ton of wildly enthusiastic sex, including positions that Shirley had blushingly told her were optimal for conception, before Lenny's sperm finally, as Squiggy put it, "hit the bull's thigh." Laverne and her first husband had made three babies in not much more time than that, although her eggs were admittedly fresher then.

The extra years of not being pregnant or breastfeeding gave her time to get her teaching degree, in physical education, because she was not like Shirley, a hidden scientific genius, and now every year she got to be a cool aunt to a fresh bunch of kids. She took maternity leave twice, but Lenny did hire help when necessary.

"Don't think you've got a built-in free babysitter, Mother," Tracy had warned at almost twelve. She was only half joking. She did end up babysitting now and then, for the going rate, but it was of course Josie who really stepped in, without complaint.

If Laverne had had more kids, Lenny would've had to buy a bigger place, selling off this one where the once cutting-edge Mid-Seventies decor that Lee and his eventual second wife had picked out was aging badly. ("No, I was not having an affair with Tanya," Lee had wearily told his host at more than one of the Squiggmans' anniversary parties. "She was just my interior decorator then, although there was a spark between us."). The Feeneys had fit five kids into two bedrooms, so three rooms seemed like enough to Laverne and Lenny. She knew that at some point she'd have to separate Jak and Lilly, like Lillian Feeney had separated Shirley and her "twin" Bobby, but Laverne was waiting to see if her homebody daughter would at least move to a different neighborhood when she started college in what was now "next year." Moving Jak into The Cave was one solution, but she couldn't really picture it, although Frankie got along fine with his kid brother, if he had his own space.

Once his biological kids' eyes and their door were shut, Lenny took his wife's hand and led her to her favorite of the four bedrooms, a giant white zigzag arrow pointing the way. The couple hung up their robes and crawled into the bed that they had bought together after Lenny's Christmas '76 proposal, an engagement gift to celebrate in, the one redecoration he'd insisted on. She loved the idea of a bed with no memories of Lee and a chance to make new memories with Lenny. He of course offered to pay for it all, but she chipped in a bit of her _Penny & Cindy_ settlement money from The Network.

(This was years before poor pregnant Annie McHugh got shafted by her husband and The Network, while Janice Dreyfuss, after holing up in Laverne's pool house, with thirteen-year-old Tracy and eleven-year-old Josie, in their matching Harriet the Spy disguises, sneaking her food and cigarettes, reluctantly returned for a surreal season of what eight-year-old Frankie had called _Penny & Penny._ Six-year-old Moth had nightmares for months about the alien abduction episode, and Squiggy had threatened to re-sue the network.)

Lenny snuggled up to her and murmured, "Well, this year's off to an interesting start."

"Yeah. Shirley kissed Richie Cunningham again."

She hadn't meant to just blurt it out like that, but it was late and she had to share the gossip with someone who knew the people involved. She flinched as he exclaimed, "Carmine just died!"

"It's been six months and it was just a New Year's kiss."

"It wasn't just a kiss if she had to call you about it. And he's wanted her for years. Believe me, I've been there."

"So, what, Red's been waiting for Carmine to die or divorce her?"

"No, I'm sorry, he's a nice kid."

She snorted. "He's forty-seven and he's been divorced twice himself."

"Well, I didn't exactly go celibate when my Muse was off the market."

Laverne didn't want to argue further about it, especially when she didn't know what had really happened two time zones away. She just turned her back on her second husband and said, "I need some sleep."

Lenny spooned her and she re-resolved some resolutions about unresolved issues.


	2. Epiphany

Shirley was studying a goat's X-ray, marveling at what animals could accidentally consume, when the phone rang one cold evening. It was her landline, and not her business number, although she did work out of her home. She wondered if it might be Laverne. She'd sort of left her best friend hanging five days ago, but she still wasn't sure what to say about Richie. Plus, it sounded like Laverne, as always, had her hands full, with Lenny and all those kids, including her students. Not that Laverne hadn't been there for her the rough last year, but sometimes tragedy was easier to handle than possible good news.

"Hello, this is Shirley."

"Hi, Shirley. This is Richie."

Her voice softened for "Hi, Richie," and she set down the X-ray.

"I hope you're not busy."

"No, I'm off the clock." She needed to go wash up for dinner, but she wanted to talk to him at least for a bit.

"Great. I've been thinking about you."

"I've been thinking about you, too," she admitted, but not that her thoughts were jumbled.

"Yeah? Well, then I want to tell you I'm thinking of moving out there."

"To Westport?" Because of one kiss and a long talk? That felt really clingy.

"No, to New England. Burlington to be exact."

"Burlington, Vermont?"

"Is there another Burlington?"

"Well, Burlington, Iowa. Um, Richie, can I call you back in an hour?"

"How about two hours? I probably should get something to eat since I've been writing all day."

"Perfect. So I'll call you at, let's see, in Chicago it'd be, um..."

"Two hours from now."

"Right. Talk to you then."

"Bye, Shirley.*

"Bye, Richie." After they hung up, she whispered one word, "Ridiculous."

Then she left her office and went into the kitchen.

"Mrs. Ragusa, the salad is all done and I made the macaroni with the cheese that Kathleen likes."

Shirley had given up asking the housekeeper to call her Shirley. At least it wasn't like the housekeeper who insisted on calling her Dr. Feeney, even after Shirley explained that she had been only a high school graduate when she was last Shirley Feeney.

"Thank you, Mrs. Shepherd." Some housekeepers preferred to go by their first names, but not this one.

"You're welcome," this housekeeper said, taking her coat off a chair. Then as she took a scarf and gloves out of the pockets, she added, "Kathleen is playing with dolls in her room."

"Thank you. Have a good night, and drive carefully. The roads are icy."

"I will. Goodnight, Mrs. Ragusa."

Kitty was indeed in her room playing with her dolls, in the sense that she had gathered them around her in a circle and was "reading" to them, like "the library lady" or her favorite teacher at daycare. "...a tiny and vewy hungwy catapillow."

Shirley was sure her daughter was doing this from memory, particularly since Kitty wasn't even looking at the text, just showing her audience the pictures. And the toddler wouldn't even be three until next month.

Shirley didn't want to interrupt, especially when her little girl was being so precious, but Kitty heard her come in. "Foodtime, Mommy?"

"Yes, Sweetie."

Kitty shut the book, stood up, and set the book on the chair. "We'll finish weeding waiter."

"Your daughter is so adorable!" Shirley had heard that hundreds of times in almost three years. From old people, from salespeople, from relatives, from the library lady and the daycare teachers. And it was true. Kathleen Feeney Ragusa was adorable.

"She looks like Boo Boo Kitty," almost-sixteen-year-old Wally commented the first time he met his half-sister.

That was true. The black fluff, the pinched, unreadable expression, the inscrutable cuteness. Carmine, the proud first time father at forty-six, had chuckled and agreed. So all plans to name this long-awaited baby (like a princess in a fairytale) after each other or after friends or relatives went out the window as easily as Rapunzel's braid.

The birth certificate said Kathleen, rather than Katherine or something trendy like Kaitlyn. Shirley liked that it felt old-fashioned but timeless, definitely Irish but not like Colleen or Cliodhna. Most people called her Kitty.

She was very feline, and as a veterinarian Shirley could say that with some authority. Kitty had her sweet, cuddly side, but she could also be aloof. And she had had genuinely terrible twos, unlike Laverne's sunny youngest. Tantrums and meltdowns that some people thought were cute, like a kitten raging at the world.

Shirley didn't know how much of this had to do with losing Carmine. Death wasn't something she could easily explain to a small child. It was hard enough telling a six-year-old boy yesterday that his lizard wasn't going to recover. She could spend the rest of her life trying to help her daughter comprehend why Daddy was gone. Shirley had heard Frank DeFazio, in his blustering way, try to explain death to a girl who was then double Kitty's age, but still far too young.

Shirley had sort of been here before, twenty years ago. But she'd hardly known her first husband, while her first date with her second husband was thirty-five years ago. Wally had never actually met his father, who died in Vietnam. Shirley wished she could tell him more about Walter, Sr. She was grateful to her double-sister-in-law Jeanie for filling in what details she could, especially when Wally was small and they lived with her.

"It's OK, Ma," he told Shirley once. When they lived in Virginia, she was "Mama," but Up North she became "Ma," maybe because at eight he thought "Mama" was too babyish, or maybe because "Ma" fit the Northeast better. Anyway, it was OK because, although she had a lot of people to help raise him, including by the time he was ten, a new husband, he was actually fine having one parent, since that was what he was used to.

Not that Carmine had been a bad stepfather, but it wasn't like with Lenny, who decided during Laverne's long-ago virginal pregnancy scare that he would be happy to help raise any children she bore, no matter who sired them. He took step-fatherhood as seriously, yet as playfully, as he took biological fatherhood. Carmine was more like a live-in uncle, involved but not intensely. And that turned out to be what Shirley and her son wanted and needed.

Not that she and Carmine hadn't been in love, but it was a low-key love, once they'd gotten past the jealousy and uncertainty that their very long-term, on-again-off-again involvement had once been powered by. He came to visit over Christmas 1976 and never really left, until the ambulance took him away ten and a half years later.

Well, he still went into The City, since he had a career on Broadway, and occasionally on TV and in movies. And he kept his loft apartment until he could break his lease. By then, he'd moved his surprisingly few belongings into her Connecticut cottage.

"Shirl, if it's furnished, and Sonny already has all the basics, then I can just bring a suitcase on the bus."

"But what about your dance studio? That was your dream."

"I can dance, and sing and act, in Hollywood. And you're my dream girl, the best part of The Sixties, remember?"

Those moments when he treated her like his Angel Face were so precious. And yet, he'd moved out to California, into an apartment above hers, like in Milwaukee, with a roommate this time (and thank goodness he got along with Sonny the few months before the stuntman suddenly became a leading action star, because Carmine really didn't want to have to move in with Lenny and Squiggy), and he and Shirley dated just like they did in Milwaukee. Well, maybe with less jealousy and possession, especially on his part, but, a wedding she pressured him into aside, no closer to getting married than they'd been in the days when, one by one, the Angora Debs found husbands, and Shirley kept looking for Mr. Right and dating lots of Mr. Wrongs.

She couldn't have known in her freshman year at Millard Fillmore High, when she was a fresh-faced innocent who hadn't even got the curse that her best friend grumbled about every month, and he was the jock who was so graceful and agile, not clumsy and lumbering like the other boys on the team off the field, that their first date would be far from the last. She was just happy to have a date to the Snow Ball, and with such a cutie. OK, he was shorter than she was and she'd have to wear flats, but she could look right into those warm brown eyes, and maybe play with those black curls, so different than all the crewcuts.

She had hundreds of memories of Kitty's father, some of them captured on film, from faded boyhood pictures his mother now wept over to professionally edited videotapes. Shirley would have a lot to share when her daughter was older.

So maybe Shirley never got the dream life with the doctor husband, three daughters (none of whom would ever jump out of a cake at a bachelor party), many pets, and a split-level, ranch-style colonial. She was married to a doctor for awhile, and thanks to him she had a son who was now in college. Her second husband gave her an adorable change-of-life baby, when she had long since accepted that Wally would always be an only child. She found her own path into medicine, where she was surrounded by other people's pets. And at home (a two-story, seventy-five-year-old with modern plumbing and electricity), an eleven-year-old St. Bernard watched over her little family.

"Woof!"

"Nanna foodtime," Kitty pointed out.

"We'll wash up and then you can help me feed Nanna."

These ordinary moments, helping her little girl at the sink, getting out the Purina and letting Kitty's tiny hands hold the dish with Nanna's name in Wally's painstaking calligraphy, serving a meal she hadn't made, telling a funny goat story and listening to the toddler talk about her classrooms, the one she learned in and the one she ran in her bedroom, these were simple everyday moments of life, the life Shirley had made for herself.

"You're so brave, Dimples."

"No, Mama, I'm not. I just do what I have to, like you did."

Shirley couldn't fathom how hard it was to be a divorced mother of five in The Forties and Fifties. Yes, Edna Babish managed it, but Edna had always seemed more heroic, larger than life, bigger of heart and spirit, than Lillian "Barb" Feeney. But maybe just surviving was heroic enough.

After dinner, Shirley carried her daughter upstairs, the faithful dog trailing after them, and tucked her into the tiny bed. Nanna wasn't allowed on the bed, although she slept next to Wally sometimes when he was home from MassArt. And there were nights that the steady breathing of a St. Bernard, and her warm, furry mass, were comforting for a widow to sleep beside, especially during the coldness of a New England winter. But tonight, as if sensing Shirley needed her privacy, or maybe for the sake of the fatherless child, Nanna curled up by the foot of Kitty's first big-girl bed. She stayed there while Shirley read _Goodnight Moon_ and then helped her daughter say goodnight to every object in the room or visible from behind the yellow ruffled curtains. And Nanna stayed there as Shirley kissed her baby goodnight and patted the faithful watchdog. "Goodnight, good dog," Shirley said, as Nanna wagged her tail against the floor. And Nanna stayed there as Shirley left the room.

She decided to call from her own bedroom, so she could hear if Kitty cried or Nanna barked. She'd use the landline, to keep the mobile free for patient emergencies. If necessary, she'd bundle up Kitty and herself and head out, carefully, on the icy roads. She'd done it before.

"Dimples, you can't live like this. I'm not saying you need to run right out and find another man, but what about a live-in housekeeper?"

When Shirley told Laverne about this bit of nagging, Laverne had cracked, "Maybe you could get a _Who's the Boss?_ situation. You like the Tony Danza type, right?" As in muscular Italian hunks, although Carmine and Mr. Danza, or for that matter Antonio and Anthony DeFazio, weren't all that much alike.

And here she was, calling a man whose red hair and freckles made his Irish heritage more obvious than her own.

He answered right away and his eagerness was flattering but a little unnerving. "Hey, Shirley!"

"Howdy, Stranger," she said in the Western twang she used to sometimes slip into waiting tables at Cowboy Bill's with Laverne.

Richie chuckled. Despite his earnestness, he laughed easily.

"So Vermont?" she prompted.

"Yeah, I've visited there a few times on book tours and it's beautiful. Plus, I want to live closer to New York."

"Because of your publisher?"

"Yes, and to be there for Chuck."

That was one of the things they'd talked about as they sat in Richie's car for a couple hours after Fonzie's party. His parents had disowned their firstborn when he came out to them as gay, over thirty years ago now. Richie didn't hold it against them, since it was a different time, but, not long after his first divorce, he'd tracked his big brother down. They'd stayed in touch, but Richie lived in Chicago, while Chuck was in New York. And now Chuck's long-time partner was dying of AIDS.

Shirley had talked about how so many people Carmine knew in the world of theater were being claimed by this horrible, mysterious illness. And, yes, she'd talked a little about losing Carmine to heart disease. "I know it's not my fault, but I'm a doctor. I keep feeling like I should've been able to save him, although it's not my specialty."

Richie had been sweet and reassuring of course, but she shifted the conversation back to his concern for Chuck. And she now said, "You're a good brother."

"Thanks, but the thing is we were never that close when we were young. All he ever talked about was basketball. Fonzie was much more my older brother. The thing about me not knowing Chuck was gay, it was partly that I was incredibly naïve, even for The Fifties, but it was also that I had no clue about his inner life, or even that he had one."

She laughed gently, knowing he meant that.

"We're still not close now, but we're family, and I think just being around some of the time might help a little."

"That makes sense, but New York isn't exactly around the corner from Burlington."

"Yeah, I looked it up and it's over five hours."

"And Westport would be almost that far."

"Yeah. Look, Shirley, I definitely don't want you to feel pressured about us, if there is an us. I know you're going through a lot and, as always, the timing is terrible. But I still believe we have potential, if you ever want to pursue it."

"There is an us. But, yes, my situation, well."

"Yeah."

"But what about you? Do you want to move so far from your boys?"

"Shirley, my boys are young men now. Rick is twenty-four and Artie is twenty-two. And they don't even live in the Midwest anymore."

It wasn't like with Tracy Levy, who Shirley didn't see every year but often enough that she didn't picture the girl as a suckling babe while Wally was unsteadily walking barefoot on a blanket at an outdoor rock concert in Malibu, given by Laverne's former Aerospace coworkers, performing as A Bunch of Guys From France. (Meanwhile, Rick West's car broke down on the way to Woodstock and he, his former roommate Carmine, and Carmine's new roommate Lenny, had to hitchhike back to the City. The three of them had over the years separately told Shirley about being picked up by coeds who gave them "three days of peace, love, and music.") And yet, sometimes in her mind's eye, she and Richie were still the almost-married couple in their early twenties in a barnyard.

"Look, whatever happens with us, I want to try living in New England for a year or so. If you're part of that life, even if just as a friend, that's great, but I understand it won't be easy."

"So you're renting?"

"Well, yeah, for now. I'll be looking at potential apartments weekend after next. I mean the weekend after this coming weekend."

"Are you flying or driving?"

"The train actually."

"Would you be willing to stop in Westport on your way back?"

"Really?"

"Just overnight. Um, maybe you could sleep on the couch, or I'll see if Wally minds you using his room."

"Whatever feels comfortable for your family."

"Uh, yeah. I need to warn you, Kitty is shy with strangers."

"Like most cats."

"Exactly."

"I'll check the train schedules and let you know."

"Great. I look forward to seeing you."

"Me, too. Goodnight, Shirley."

"Goodnight, Richie." After she hung up, she sat on the window seat and gazed out at the whiteness shining out of the winter darkness. She murmured, "Goodnight, Ice. Goodnight, Moon."


	3. Jak's Birthday

Laverne was watching _The Bride Princess,_ directed by Janice Dreyfuss's ex-husband, with her two youngest when the doorbell rang one late afternoon in mid-January. The family had already memorized parts of the movie, but it was a good distraction while Josie was working on Jak's cake.

The birthday boy rose from the sofa and marched to the front door. He opened it and said, "Oh, it's you."

Laverne didn't know if he was reacting to the guest not bringing gifts or to the guest herself, but she scolded, "Don't be rude."

"It's fine, Laverne," said the voice at the door, still beautifully Flatbush after all these years. "Capricorns ain't got no tact."

"Hey, I'm a Capricorn!"

"Capricorn-Aquarius cusp," the woman with streaks of white in her thick black hair reminded her.

Lilly now leapt off the couch and rushed at the guest who looked like a pale-skinned gypsy. "Madame Ogre!" she squealed.

"Oof, the lioness has gotten bigger in the last year."

"Hey, Jo, is the cake— Oh, is it that time of year already?"

"And the Gemini is a giant."

"Frankie, can you keep an eye on these two while I get my chart read?"

Her older son glanced at the ancient fairytale characters on the paused TV screen and said, "Have fun storming the castle." Then he settled on the couch with a small sibling on either side.

Laverne led her old Brooklyn classmate out to the backyard and to what Tracy long ago had named the pool table. That is, the table by the swimming pool. The water reflected the overcast sky. They sat down and the former Paula Rosenzweig opened her notebook for a forecast that was not weather-related.

Madame Olga hadn't done Laverne's chart every year. There was a time when Laverne lost a little faith, maybe because Olga had promised her a Leo daughter in 1971, and not foreseen that Laverne would laugh so hard at finding out that Shirley and Squiggy had a one-night stand, Laverne would go into premature labor with a Moon Child instead. And then in 1984, Laverne's last child turned out to be a female Leo.

By then, Olga had a syndicated column as Astrologer to the Stars. Laverne was not the only spouse of a celebrity to consult her. As for the celebrity of this household, he tolerated these annual consultations, but he'd never been fond of the woman who told _The National Enquirer_ in 1977, "Libra ain't a great match for Capricorn, even a Capricorn on the Aquarius cusp."

"So the main thing about your next year is, you're goin' through a lot of change."

Laverne put one hand on her own stomach, thinking of how unfair it was that she still got cramps.

"I don't just mean Change of Life. Well, yeah, that, but not just menopause. You are gonna have to deal with a whole bunch of people's life changes."

"Like what?"

"I don't got time to do evvybody's chart. Your family of course, some friends."

"Uh, don't you think that's a little vague?"

Olga sighed in weariness and annoyance as only she could. "You know what I hated about The Seventies?"

"Um, no, what?"

"I'd go to singles bars and guys would say, 'Hey, Baby, what's your sign?' "

"What's that got to do with me?" Laverne hadn't really been single since 1968, when she fell quickly for a hippie law student. And in '76, Lenny scooped her up while her divorce was still pending.

"I am, as your Scorpio friend put it in 1970, a mistress of the ocular. I make my livin' seein' into the past, present, and future. And here were these schmucks and schlemiels thinkin' they understood somethin' as complex as astrology."

"I feel insulted."

"Hey, Sweetheart, you're my favorite Cap-Aqua cusp with a Scorp moon. I just mean, I can't give you easy answers."

"What is your sign?" asked Laverne, who couldn't remember her oldest friend celebrating a birthday in the couple months they attended P.S. 38 together, before Pop came back from The War and moved his resentful daughter and terminally ill wife in with his brother Fungee in Milwaukee.

Olga hesitated and then mumbled, "It's Taurus," like she was confessing her darkest secret.

"Taurus?" Laverne scoffed. "Carmine was a Taurus!"

"Yeah, yeah, evvybody thinks I must be an air sign, or maybe a water sign. But trust me, I ain't the air sign in my house."

She had an almost-thirteen-year-old daughter, an unplanned but much wanted Aquarius, who was a halfling bard in Moth's D & D group. And after fifteen years of mutual infatuation, with the spacy Gemini thinking the star-gazer was too far above him, and the woman who guided Cher through romance not knowing any better how to tell a guy she liked him than Paula had with five-year-old Ben Holland in 1943, Madame Olga and Chuck Fleischer finally got together. Well, Laverne finally had to nudge them, like a bulldozer, as Francine Squiggman put it. And now they had a four-year-old Libra, a non-chimpanzee Chucky, Jr.

"Like I said, charts are complicated. On paper, you don't seem like a Capricorn. You ain't a modest, meticulous workaholic, although you got the pessimistic adjuster part down. But you throw in some Aquarius for the free-thinkin' but opinionated rebel, mix in the Scorpio moon for calm under difficult situations, and a bunch of other planets and you get Laverne DeFazio Levy Kosnowski."

Laverne hesitated and then said, "I lost my sex drive."

Olga nodded as if not surprised, but then it didn't take a psychic to know an almost-fifty-year-old woman might have that as a side effect of menopause. "Yeah, luckily Chuck was happy with hand-jobs for a few months last year."

Chuck had been a virgin at almost thirty, until Laverne gave him a pity screw, shortly before she met Lee at an anti-war protest. She'd worried Chuck might get clingy, but he was just grateful for what he got.

"Now your Libra with the Pisces moon, he's grateful but very needy. He understands you real well, scarily well, but he's also got insecurities he tries to hide. You gotta be affectionate, show you're still crazy about him, even if your body ain't cooperatin'. At the same time, he's gonna get a big oppatunity this year, and you gotta support whatevah decision he makes about it."

"What opportunity?" Laverne asked eagerly.

"Somethin' musical."

Laverne snorted. "Thanks."

"Some kinda collaboration," Olga grudgingly offered.

That was intriguing, but Laverne decided to keep it to herself for now. "Anything else?"

"Well, you know Carmine's widow, the Virgo?"

"Yeah?" Laverne said warily.

"Well, I don't know the details, since I've never done her full chart, but you're gonna be affected by one of her old possibilities for romance."

"Yeah, she might get together with an old, well, not flame or boyfriend, but, yeah, I guess possibility." Shirley had written to her about Richie planning to move to Vermont, and he'd be stopping over in Westport after apartment-hunting

"What sign?"

"Um, I think he's born in December, but he doesn't seem like my kind of Capricorn or Jak's."

"So Sagittarius. Hm, now see the Taurus-Virgo match was interesting 'cause it was two Earth signs and he could really bring out her sensuality, while he loved that she was smarter than him but more innocent. And they had a love that built slow but coulda lasted until they were both old."

Laverne felt like crying at all the years Shirley and Carmine had lost, not just from his death but from their own blindness.

"Virgo-Sagittarius, lemme think. Again, this is just surface stuff, since I don't know nothin' about him. But in general, these are two people who wanna stay up all night talkin'. He's more adventurous than she is, but he admires her quiet bravery. He's gonna fall for her faster, if he hasn't already, but she's gonna groove on his restless energy, if it don't drive her crazy."

"What about sex?" Laverne couldn't help asking, depressed libido or not.

"They're both innocent, but he's like a playful boy and she's a sheltered girl, even if some of that's hidin' grim reality from herself. At the same time, all that talkin' and mind-sex really pays off when they finally wind up in bed. He's gonna help her explore in a different way than the patient, persistent Taurus did. And he's gonna love that Virgo attention to detail. They'll probably communicate what they want real well, in words and otherwise."

Laverne actually blushed more than she had at Olga's 1977 analysis: "You and the Libra fiancé are gonna have to work on your marriage, except in bed, where you love his tenderness and passion, and he really goes for your Cap livin'-in-your-body earthiness, with that dash of air sign commonality of creativity. And then your Scorpio moon with his Pisces moon, you get each other instinctively, especially him groking you, sometimes without words, just through the eyes. The sex is amazing and it'll only get better with time, 'cause it's never just sex, but a full-on body-mind-soul melt-meld, like nothin' you had before. Even with your Aries ex, where arguin' was foreplay. But you and the Libra are gonna have to deal with life when you ain't flirtin' or humpin', and that's where the challenges will be."

Olga now asked, "You wanna hear the negatives for Virgo and Sadge?"

"Well, maybe just one."

"His fiery free spirit might not mix with her roots."

"Yeah, but the thing is, Shirley has got her wild side and Richie was an honor student who kept his room tidy."

"Wait, Richie Cunningham the novelist?"

"Uh, yeah."

"The one who wrote a book where she's a sexy nurse?"

"Well, yes."

"I bet he's got a Cancer moon."

Laverne didn't know how to answer that.

"Mom, the cake is ready!" more than one voice called from the now open sliding doorway.

"You want a slice?" she offered her kindergarten classmate as they stood up.

"Yeah, angel food with Smurf decorations is my favorite."

Laverne didn't even ask how Olga knew.


	4. Laverne's Birthday

Unlike most people, Shirley woke up on a winter Monday morning with a smile on her face. She had been up half the night talking with Richie. They probably would've talked until dawn if he didn't have a train to catch at noon and she didn't have responsibilities. She slept peacefully and innocently with a St. Bernard beside her, while Richie slept uncomplainingly on the sofa.

In the end, she decided not to ask Wally if Richie could use his bedroom. It was only one night and she didn't want to call about it just yet. Not that Wally would disapprove of her dating only six and a half months after his stepfather's death, but she wanted to first have a better sense of where this new-old relationship was going.

Introducing Richie to Kitty was unavoidable and necessary. The college sophomore had somewhat of his own life, but her daughter would be living at home for at least another fifteen years. Also, Kitty wasn't like Lilly Kosnowski, instantly warming up to people, a blend of Laverne's ability to say anything to anybody with Lenny's ease at expressing affection. Kitty took her time deciding if she liked outsiders.

It was promising that, although she didn't say much to Richie yesterday, she tolerated his presence. Shirley had been braced for her daughter to throw a fit at this strange man sharing their dinner, standing quietly in the doorway as Mama sang a lullaby. But Kitty mostly ignored him.

Once the little girl was asleep, the two adults went back downstairs, where they held hands on the couch and spoke softly. To her surprise, they mostly talked about their work: his latest draft, which he was inputting on a computer, and her latest cases, some of them weather-related.

She now yawned and stretched and got going on her day. It was like so many other mornings, but she was very aware of the guest downstairs. As she bathed and dressed herself and then her daughter, she wondered if he was awake yet, especially with his recent travel and the time difference. She felt fresh and energetic, despite not having a full night's sleep, but she thought maybe she'd let Richie rest if he needed it, since it was still hours until he had to be at the train station.

When she brought Kitty downstairs, Nanna following as always, Richie was watching _Good Morning America_ with the sound on low. He shut off Joan Lunden in mid-sentence and looked at them all with a warm smile. "Good morning, Ladies."

Shirley was just thinking how sleazy that would've sounded coming from a very different man, like Squiggy, when her daughter said, "You need bath."

Richie chuckled. "I probably should take a shower before I go."

"The bathroom is the door right at the head of the stairs."

Richie nodded. "I brushed my teeth before I went to sleep last night."

She remembered their goodnight kiss, both of them tasting faintly, hours later, of the apple pie, Mrs. Shepherd had left them. The housekeeper generally didn't work weekends, and Kitty's daycare was only weekday mornings for her age group, so Shirley was not on call, and she focused on her little family. It had been strange but special to have a guest Sunday evening and night.

When Richie pushed aside the blankets and stood up, she saw he was in a robe, pajamas, and slippers.

She wondered if that was as much for modesty as for warmth. And as she made breakfast, she had to keep stopping herself from imagining him in her bathroom. They hadn't made out, and it was January, so she knew his shower wouldn't be cold. She couldn't help wondering where besides his scalp and upper lip he had red hair. All the men she'd seen naked were brunet, except for a certain now aging rock star.

As she pushed away these naughty thoughts, on the surface she was dividing her attention between her daughter, her dog, and the food she was preparing. She couldn't help thinking of how she had no eggs or pork products for the Midwestern man. She didn't mind cooking meat, but she had mostly left that for Mrs. Shepherd and previous housekeepers when Carmine was alive. Wally was vegetarian at home but not at friends' houses, or now the campus dining hall. And Kitty knew nothing but vegetarianism, although Laverne of course joked about her eating mice.

"Mmm, homemade pancakes! Thank you."

The man in the kitchen doorway was wearing a plaid checked shirt and faded jeans. Shirley thought of the college boy she'd almost married, but this man was not clean-shaven. Potsie Weber's pubescent but deep voice from three years before the shotgun wedding popped into her head: "We shaved and everything."

She managed to tell Richie, "It's Bisquick actually."

"I mean not from a restaurant," he said, as he pulled out a chair and sat down.

Kitty glared at him from across the little table. "Buddy chay," she scolded.

He looked at Shirley for a translation, so she said, "That's her big brother's usual chair."

He stood up. "Oops, sorry." He shifted over to the next chair clockwise, on Kitty's right. "That better, Kit?"

The toddler nodded approvingly. "Daddy chay."

Shirley was startled, both that Kitty remembered where Carmine used to sit, and that she was so easily putting Richie in the stepfather spot. Or maybe she just thought of middle-aged men as daddies.

Richie was blushing, so Shirley shifted the conversation to topics like the food, weather, and plans for the day.

After breakfast, they all bundled up. Richie understood that Kitty wouldn't want him to touch her yet, but he patiently handed Shirley the tiny hat, coat, scarf, mittens, and boots.

He went with them when Shirley dropped Kitty off at daycare. He didn't try to hug her goodbye and looked surprised when she wished him, "Nice twain wide."

Then he smiled and said, "Have a good day at school, Kit."

Shirley waited until they were driving away from the daycare center before she said, "I think she likes you a little."

"That's a start."

"You're good with children."

"Thanks. I've been Uncle Richie almost as long as I've been a father."

"And Joanie has such a big family."

"Yeah, plus the five from my second marriage."

"Do you want to talk about what happened with that?"

"Why not? It'll pass the time on the drive."

They'd agreed that he'd accompany her as she made a "house call" on a patient who couldn't make it into the office. The roads weren't too bad this morning, but she still drove slowly and carefully on her way to and through the countryside.

"You weren't married very long that time," she prompted.

"Just a couple years. We got together in 1980. She was raising her five orphaned nieces and nephews."

"That was a lot to take on, for both of you."

"Well, she had a live-in housekeeper, Gladys, and a very helpful boarder, Random."

She laughed. "Random?"

He smiled but shook his head. "I'm still not sure if that's his first or last name, since that's how he signed the rent checks. Probably still does."

"He hasn't moved out after all these years?"

"No, I think he's going to stay as long as the family needs him."

"Do you think he and your ex, I mean not that she was cheating on you, but could there be an attachment between them?"

"No, no, he's a nice guy, but kind of asexual. He never dated or seemed to want to date, but he also didn't seem like he was pining for Rio."

"Rio?" Shirley echoed, thinking of Rio de Janeiro.

He grimaced. "That was my nickname for her, but her real name is Marion."

"Oh dear," she said, trying not to laugh.

"Yeah, you can imagine what Ralph Malph did with that when he heard."

"Fonzie never told me or Laverne much about your second marriage," she indirectly answered.

"There's not that much to tell, compared to Lori Beth. Rio was smart and warm and sexy and sophisticated, but also playful and down to earth. I met her when she and the kids were teaching Random how to skate."

"He didn't know how, a grown man?"

"Yeah, he was weird, not in a creepy way, but eccentric I guess. Anyway, the Richards kids' Aunt Marion was and is a beautiful brunette with this great Southern accent and dry wit, so I could get past her sharing a first name with my mother, especially since she liked the nickname. Of course, her nieces thought it was hilarious when that Duran Duran song came out after the divorce."

Shirley remembered the Levy girls singing it and had to stop herself from singing a bit now.

"The kids were nine to seventeen when I married Rio after a very short courtship. I moved out to the suburbs and hit a writer's block that lasted the entire marriage. Not that I was unhappy, but there were so many people in Rio's house and I never had the quiet I needed to think. Even when little Richie and Artie were babies, Lori Beth saw to it I had the time and space to write."

Shirley pictured sharing her uncrowded home with Richie, but it was far too soon for that. "Jeanie did something like that for me when I was in college and then vet school."

"Yeah, a support system is important."

Neither of them said that that was one thing they'd have to work out, if this got serious: how would a doctor and a writer function as a couple?

She said, "Are you still in touch with Mar— Rio and her family?"

"Of course. We all still live in Chicago, well, obviously I'm moving away, but I left the marriage on good terms, and they're still nice kids. The twin boys are sixteen now, and I gave them advice on buying their first car, since that's not the kind of thing Random knows. And the girls are in college, so I give them advice about college men, although obviously a lot has changed since The Fifties. And Chris, the oldest, plays for the Bears and he gets me tickets for their home games."

"That's a lot to give up," Shirley teased, hoping he was over his sexy second wife.

"Yeah, but New England has a lot to offer."

She blushed but then they started talking about the frosted scenery.

When they got to the Jackson farm, she introduced Richie as a visiting friend. He carried her medical bag for her, and the simple chivalry of it pleased her. He asked lots of questions as she examined the horse with the white star on its brown forehead, and she didn't know if it was because he might put this in a book someday or because he knew that women like to be asked about their jobs. Maybe both, but she was flattered either way.

It wasn't that Carmine had shown no interest in her career. But he had found it perfectly understandable that she'd become a veterinarian. He'd known her so well for so long. She and Richie had met over thirty years ago, but it wasn't like they'd ever been part of each other's everyday lives, or even stayed in touch all that time. There was a sense of constant discovery about their relationship, even now.

The horse was fine and this was mostly a checkup. After Shirley reported to Mr. Jackson, she and Richie headed back to her place, where she made them hot chocolate.

She blew on hers and took a cautious sip before she said, "If you want to nap before you go, you can use my bed."

"Thanks, but I feel wide awake and I can nap on the train if I have to."

She nodded, thinking about how there was something about him that gave her an alert sort of energy.

"If you've got more appointments, don't worry about me. I can amuse myself until it's time to go to the station."

"No, I don't have anything on the schedule for the rest of the day, although I am on call. And I'll need to phone Laverne to wish her a happy birthday, but that won't be until the evening here, since I'll need to wait until she gets home from school."

"Oh, that's right, she's a P.E. teacher."

"Yes, at the local middle school."

Her cell phone rang, but it was a pet owner. Richie gestured that she should go ahead and get back to work. She did but she took her hot chocolate into the office.

She was free again when it was time to drive him to the train station. Their hug and kiss goodbye was more rushed than she'd have liked, but she knew she would see him again soon, although not exactly when. He'd told her that he'd found an apartment he liked and signed the lease. He'd move in on the first of the month. In a way, this all seemed to be happening quickly, although she knew Laverne would scoff at that.

"I'll call you when I get settled."

"Goodbye, Richie."

"Goodbye for now, Shirley."

By the time she got home, Mrs. Shepherd had picked up Kitty from daycare. She did not, as some housekeepers would've, tease Shirley about her overnight guest, but Richie had neatly remade Wally's bed with the blankets and pillows that Shirley had made up the couch with.

The afternoon passed quickly and then it was time for mother, daughter, and dog to have dinner. Afterwards, Shirley called Laverne while Kitty was playing with her blocks.

There was a lot of noise in the background when Laverne answered, with four kids, the radio, and the television all competing for attention.

The woman who could once silence a room full of Teamsters, yelled, "Shirl, let me take this outside." She didn't own a mobile phone, but Shirley pictured her carrying the receiver to the the other side of the sliding door, facing the pool. When Laverne spoke again, it sounded like the background noise was muffled by glass. "That's better."

"It's warm enough to sit outside?"

"Well, I had to grab a sweater. How's the weather there?"

"A little icy," Shirley admitted.

"Well, you're the one who left Burbank for Berlin, and Annandale for Westport."

"I had to be with my husband when I was pregnant!"

It was an argument that had roots that were over twenty years old. Maybe if they had hashed it out at the time, these feelings wouldn't have lingered so long. Invariably, Laverne felt that Shirley had abandoned her to what Laverne still called "the worst year of my life." Never mind that it was more like eight months and, in Shirley's opinion, less to do with Shirley's absence and more to do with Laverne's bad luck and poor decision-making. Not that Shirley wasn't sympathetic about and even horrified by some of what Laverne had gone through, but she refused to be eaten up by guilt about it. That Walter had left her in Germany, because of his own honor and duty, never to return, so that instead of having the support of Laverne and their other friends as she struggled through motherhood and widowhood, well, that was unforeseen, no matter what "Madame Olga" apparently hinted at in her 1968 birthday forecast for Laverne.

"Shirl, I don't wanna argue with you on my birthday."

"I'm sorry, Vernie. Happy birthday of course. Are you doing anything special?"

"Well, Lenny offered to throw me a big party, with celebrities and everything, but I told him to save it for our anniversary party."

"The big one-one," Shirley teased.

Laverne snorted. "Yeah, I don't even know what the eleventh anniversary is. The tenth was tin."

Shirley had sent them a Tin Woodman doll and a card that said, "You always had each other's heart." She now observed, "None of us have hit this milestone before." She had less than a year with Walter, and married Carmine after Laverne married Lenny, despite Mama's long-distance nagging about "living in sin with the dancer who was in the mob." (Barb lightened up about Carmine after Kitty was born, in wedlock.) None of Frank's or Edna's marriages, including the two to each other, had cracked the decade mark. And Rhonda, well, she remained a typical Hollywood starlet in regard to the longevity of her matrimonial and other unions.

"Nah, Squiggy and Francine are still together, somehow, and they got married months before me and Lenny did."

"Well, yes, but they do weird anniversaries. Didn't you tell me the seventh was lard?"

Laverne chuckled. "Yeah, and last year was lint, but I think that was Lenny's suggestion."

"Well, at least that will make getting you and Lenny a gift easy this year."

"I can't wait. And speaking of middle-aged romance, how was your sleepover?"

Shirley blushed, although Laverne of course couldn't see it. "We talked a lot. And he went with me for Starlight's check-up."

"No voe-dee-oh-doe?"

"God, are you turning fifteen instead of fifty?"

"You want me to put that in cruder terms?"

"No! We're, well, taking it slow."

"Yeah? Lenny thinks you're rushing it into it."

"I guess it's sort of both."

"That makes sense, especially where you two are in life."

"Mm hm. Richie wishes you a happy birthday by the way. He said, 'I hope her second half-century is as amazing as her first, and twice as happy.' "

"He's sweet. And you're sweet. And I hope you get to make sweet love soon."

Before Shirley could scold her, the glass door slid open and Laverne's husband and four of her five children started serenading her with a raucous "You say it's your birthday?" 

So the two best friends said goodbye. Shirley wished she could be there, and not just to share in one of Josie's "Fudgicle cakes," but that wasn't possible. So she went to go build dream homes with her almost-three-year-old daughter.


	5. Groundhog Day

"If the cramps keep up, try drinking more water or eating some chocolate."

Selena Rosenzweig smiled despite the pain. "Thanks, Mrs. Kosnowski. I always like your advice more than Ms. Middleton's."

"Yeah, well, don't tell her I've been recommending sugar and caffeine." Milk and Pepsi was another cure-all that the school nurse frowned upon.

Not every girl at Agoura Hills Middle School confided in Laverne, but she was one of the most popular teachers. She knew that some kids hated P.E., so she did her best to make it fun.

Selena was a special case, as Paula's daughter and Frankie's friend. Laverne had seen Tracy and Josie through their first periods not that long ago, and she'd known Selena since infancy. Plus, it was the kid's birthday.

"You can sit out today, if you'll help me keep score."

"Awesome!"

Laverne wished she had someone to guide her through menopause, a friend rather than a doctor. Edna was great, but she lived in Florida, next door to Pop. (After a couple tries at matrimony with each other, they decided they'd been happiest when they were going steady.) Edna's Change of Life experiences were from a time that was so foreign, medically and morally, that even Laverne, who'd been a young woman then, didn't know if any of it still applied.

Four years ago, Laverne had told Tracy and Josie the real story of their stepfather's first proposal. They knew what Laverne called the Callahan version, although it struck them differently as young adolescents seeing it in syndication after school, following a _Rock Around the Clock_ episode where wholesome Ronny wanted to run off with beatniks. They were no longer the little girls who calmly debated matters of sex and love, marriage and reproduction, without having any real clue how all that worked. Laverne, then going through her last pregnancy, explained what it was like to go through a pregnancy scare at twenty in The Fifties, and the shame that came with it when she'd been too drunk to know if she'd actually done the dirty deed. (Edna's doctor said she hadn't.) Laverne told her daughters about her options, including marrying a man she wouldn't fall in love with for a very long time.

"I did start to love Lenny as a friend then. Anybody would've. He'd parted his hair all nice and neat, washed the grease out. He had on a tie, the nicest tie he owned, but he tied it so it was hanging too low, and it had a hula girl on it."

"Was he wearing The Jacket?" twelve-year-old Josie had asked.

"Of course."

Lenny's old red jacket was legendary, and not just to his sentimental stepdaughter. He posed with it, his back to the camera, for the cover of his 1985 album, _One Wolf_ , a loner's smile over his shoulder, Laverne's cursive L prominent.

"Len, I got the guy that shot Springsteen's ass for _Born in America_ ," Squiggy had proudly reported.

Laverne thought Lenny's tushie was better than The Boss's, but he insisted on the photos being taken from above the waist. Maybe he was self-conscious about being in his late 40s, or maybe he felt different about beefcake now that he had two small children. Laverne knew he'd always been a combination of shy and uninhibited, as symbolized by the coyness of his _Cosmo_ centerfold, back in his eligible bachelor days. It was one of the things she loved about him, and she was possessive enough that she would just as soon not have everyone staring at his heiney.

"What did he say?" asked Josie, whose ideas of proposals were still very Disney.

"Oh, you know, what a good husband he'd try to be and that he liked me." She still knew that proposal, and all the others, by heart. But she had never told even Shirley exactly what Lenny said that snowy fall day.

"But you said no," fourteen-year-old Tracy guessed shrewdly. Well, obviously Tracy knew she had, unless Jerry Callahan had changed that. Like, it could've been that Pop in real life had put his foot down about Laverne marrying a Polish picklehead. (He never got an Italian son-in-law, but he'd been thrilled when Tracy's first serious boyfriend was Vinnie Saccucci, and then devastated by their breakup.)

"You gotta be in love when you get married." That was one thing that Laverne always believed in, whatever else she'd lost faith in over the years. That and that friends and family were like water and air and you couldn't live without them.

"And you didn't give in, even when society and everyone told you that you should let Lenny 'give the kid a name.' "

Sometimes Tracy acted like Laverne was her feminist role model, and other times she acted like Laverne was hopelessly "retrograde," not in the astrological sense. Laverne thought of herself as someone who coped the best she could with what life gave her, while trying to be true to herself.

"Well, your Aunt Shirley woulda thought I was crazy if I even went steady with Lenny back then."

"Yeah, Cindy was always trying to keep Penny from getting with Mikey."

"That's just because Cindy had dreams for both of them."

"Yeah, and how'd that work out for the mail-order bride?"

Josie burst into tears, the pain of the final season of the girls' once favorite TV show then still raw.

Laverne had cut off the argument and brought it back to her main point, which was that they didn't have to save themselves for marriage, but she hoped they'd be sensible and safe about sex, no matter what their hormones and boyfriends told them. But "mistakes" happen and they could come to her if and when they needed her.

Tracy and Josie were virgins four years ago. Josie definitely still was, which was part of why Tommy Milligan dumped her six weeks ago. (The other part, Frankie theorized, was to get out of buying her a Christmas present.) Laverne was not so sure about Tracy anymore, but she'd done the cool-mom thing and taken her firstborn to a gynecologist last summer, before Tracy left for Europe with Meghan. Pop thought it was "safe" that Tracy was going to a women's college, but it wasn't like Wellesley was the only school in the Boston area. Or that Tracy would only date college boys. But Laverne had to trust her and hope for the best.

Laverne's own mother had died long before she lost her virginity, or even hit puberty. And now Mom wasn't around to help her through menopause.

It wasn't like Laverne's closest female friends were much help. Shirley went straight from breastfeeding to post-menopause. She last got her period in the spring of '84 and actually thought at first that she was going through The Change at forty-five, until she realized in the summer that she was three months pregnant.

"Shirl, you're a doctor," Laverne had said in disbelief.

"Not for humans."

Rhonda now claimed to be forty, even though Laverne had once seen her driver's license, so even if she'd gone or was going through menopause, she'd never admit it.

Francine Squiggman ended her fertile years as undramatically as she did everything else. It was Squiggy who practically had an existential crisis, of course on Lenny and Laverne's shoulders, about whether he should've had more than one child.

"I dunno, maybe I should donate some of my seed to the local bank, so that the Squiggman genes and chromakeys can live on."

Laverne really hoped he meant the local sperm bank, but luckily Lenny had talked him out of it. "STAC is legacy enough, Squig."

Olga alternated between Flatbush bluntness and cosmic talk about being aligned with the cycles of the moon, even last year when Laverne went the whole spring without her period, only to get it for most of the month of July. And Selena said yesterday, "I mean, my name means moon, and I'm glad it's not Luna or whatever, but I don't feel all light as air."

The newly thirteen-year-old girl now said, "They play to 25 points a set, right, Mrs. Kosnowski?"

"Yeah, the first four sets, but then the final set is to 15 points. But a team has to win a set by two points."

"Ugh, math is everywhere!"

Selena's least favorite part of D & D was anything to do with calculations, but the dungeonmaster took care of that for her. Laverne now realized that the cramps must be pretty bad if Selena had been willing to be scorekeeper for volleyball.

After class, Laverne bought her a candy bar from the vending machine, which made Selena grin and say, "You're the best, Mrs. K!" School was done for the day after that, and Laverne didn't have any meetings. She didn't wait around for Frankie, since he was walking to a friend's house to play music. She instead headed straight over to pick up her youngest two.

Lenny's P.A. was the one who took Jak from kindergarten to daycare almost every weekday at noon, while Lilly was there from nine to three, longer on the days Laverne had to stay late. Josie had her license but couldn't drive her younger siblings around without an adult in the car, and she would've been too nervous anyway. She usually came straight home from school, unless she was hanging out with friends or preparing for a high school drama production. (She was on the tech crew, while Tracy was usually one of the leads before she graduated.)

"...And Teacher said if the groundhog sees his shadow, then we have six more weeks of winter," Jak carefully explained in Laverne's car.

"What about girl ground dogs?" his baby sister asked.

"No, Pucks & Tanny Phil is a boy groundhog."

"What's winner?"

"You know, like on TV, when they have snow, that white stuff from the mountains."

"Oh. Like where Santa lives."

Sometimes Laverne just listened and didn't bother joining in. She was glad she still had kids who were years away from puberty. And she didn't want to even think about how she'd be almost one hundred by the time Lilly hit menopause.


	6. Kitty's Birthday

Kitty third birthday was on a Saturday, so Shirley got to spend the whole day with her. She invited Kitty's two best friends from daycare and their mothers to Beardsley Zoo in Bridgeport. It was Shirley's treat, although she was able to finagle a group discount, as a veterinarian. Some zoos depressed Shirley, since they seemed like prisons, but Beardsley was very humane and conservationist. Plus, the zoo had a carousel.

It was only a fifteen-minute drive, so they didn't bother to car pool but would all just meet there. The roads weren't too bad, but Shirley still drove carefully of course. She thought about maybe taking Kitty into The City when her daughter was older, as she used to do with Wally. Of course, Carmine was around then.

She had thought of inviting Richie today, but that felt too soon. And he would be doing another overnight next weekend, for Valentine's Day. Well, he'd visit Chuck and Chuck's partner in New York and then stay with Shirley on his way back.

The other moms weren't bringing partners to Beardsley. Heidi Bremen was married with two daughters, while Pamela Madison had lived with her boyfriend for five years with no interest in marriage, which would've shocked Mama. Both moms were much younger than Shirley, Heidi in her late twenties, Pamela in her early thirties. The three of them had juggling careers (Heidi was a school receptionist and Pamela was in advertising) and motherhood in common, but Shirley definitely felt like she was from a different generation. Thirteen-year-old Shirley had cried along with Johnny Ray on the song "Cry," and Pam and Heidi had once asked her if she'd gone to Woodstock, since they were too young. Shirley had tried to just be flattered that she still looked young for her age, and hadn't explained that she had taken her one-year-old son to a much less crowded rock concert that famous weekend.

(Squiggy brought a starlet client, and was very disappointed when she left him for One of the Guys from France, "and he ain't even a real Frog." He would've been even more upset if he'd known that his best friend was being picked up, along with Carmine and Rick West, by three college girls in a blue and green van with orange flower decals.)

Shirley got to the zoo first. Neither Heidi nor Pam had a mobile phone, so after ten minutes Shirley called their homes. Both the plumber husband and the architect boyfriend said that their ladies were on the way, although Heidi apparently got a late start because her daughters were arguing about which exhibit they'd go to first. Shirley hadn't actually invited the older Bremen girl, but one more child's admission wasn't a big deal.

If they got there. Kitty was starting to pout and whine, which meant a tantrum was probably on its way. Shirley was able to distract her a little with a map from the ticket booth, but they couldn't go in until the others got there, since Shirley was paying.

The Madisons showed up first. Little Harriet needed a pit stop halfway, although Pam had asked if she had to go before they left. And then five minutes later, the Bremens arrived. The sisters had squabbled again, so Heidi threatened to turn the car around and then actually did. They were almost home before the sisters made up and apologized to her. She now made them apologize to Shirley and Kitty.

"It's fine," Shirley said, just relieved everyone was there now.

Kitty didn't say anything at first and then mumbled, "Go in zoo," which for her was the equivalent of one of Lilly's hugs of forgiveness.

Kitty cheered up once they got to see the animals. The little girls probably all ate too much sugar that day, but it was a special occasion. And everyone went home when Kitty wasn't the only one who was tired and cranky. Shirley tried not to think about how this was the most socializing she'd done since Carmine's death.

Wally called when they got home. Shirley actually hadn't spoken with him since he stayed at Carmella Ragusa's for a few days of winter break, before he left for his Aunt Jeanie and Uncle Christopher's in Virginia. Kitty's relatives were nice enough to him, but Shirley knew that he didn't think of them as his own family.

Unlike his mother, Wally wasn't big on phone calls, but they both enjoyed writing letters, so that worked. He always included doodles for Kitty, and not just because she was too little to read.

Walter Meeney, Jr. and Kathleen Ragusa were both introverts and even further apart in age than Tracy Levy and Lillian Kosnowski, without siblings in between. Their mother had no doubt of their bond, that Wally would raise his baby sister if anything happened to Shirley, that Lilly lit up whenever Buddy came home, but it was a quiet, subtle bond.

Shirley and her brothers, especially Bobby, had once had their rhymes and routines, photos and anecdotes, but the family was scattered now. None of them even lived in Wisconsin anymore, although they'd visit, as Shirley did every year or two.

She listened to the quiet little girl chatter away about "gowillas" and "alleygatahs," the "cawousel" and "ice cweam." Shirley knew that the college boy was listening patiently, fondly, 160 miles to the northeast.

After awhile, Kitty set the receiver on the table and said, "Mama talk." Then she left the kitchen and after a moment, Shirley heard the TV click on.

Shirley picked up the phone and asked, "Is everything all right?"

"Yeah, Ma, I'm just checking in."

She took a deep breath and asked, "What would you think if I started dating again?"

"Well, it would depend on the guy, if he was good to you and Kitty, but you're a better judge of character when it comes to boyfriends than Aunt Laverne used to be."

He didn't know all the stories, because there was only so much she was going to tell her still teenage son. But he'd absorbed some from sporadic viewing of the distorted misadventures of Penny and Cindy, like the episode where Penny dated a cute crook, played by Fred Willard, who Cindy was suspicious of from the moment he showed up at their Detroit auto plant. Cindy was too trusting in general, but she'd inherited some of "Donna's" wariness about men. (Mrs. Williams's bridge group told the divorced mother of five she looked like Donna Reed.)

"You don't think it's too soon?" Sometimes she agreed with Lenny, who still openly mourned Carmine, who he'd written a couple songs about in the past seven months. But she felt like she and Carmine had always been connected, even during their breakups and separations. She had told Kitty, "Daddy is gone," but Carmine would always be a part of Shirley.

_"You were the best part of The Eighties, Angel Face, and I just wish I could've made it to The Nineties and beyond, seen our angel baby grow up."_

Wally replied, "Well, I know you loved Carmine, you always loved Carmine, always will love him, so you don't have to prove anything about that. And while I don't agree with Grandma that you need a man, 'even though you can't trust men,' it must get lonely sometimes. Also, I know you, Ma, and you don't rush into relationships. So this is probably some guy you've known awhile."

"Since The Fifties."

He laughed. "Anyone I know?"

"No, actually, although I'm sure you know of him. It's Richie Cunningham."

"The writer who—?"

"Yes, yes," she said hurriedly.

"Wow!"

"Is that a good wow or a bad wow?"

"It's a processing-data wow."

Even an art student like Wally used computing vernacular sometimes. Shirley and Richie had talked about how their sons were much more technologically minded than their generation was, and not just the now ironically named Artie, the programmer.

"Well, he's moved to Vermont but we're taking it slow."

"OK. I'd like to meet him if it does get serious."

"Of course. Um, are you seeing anyone lately?"

"Nothing serious."

"How are your classes going?"

"Good. Um, actually, besides the birthday wishes, I called to get your opinion on something."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, what do you think of nude modeling?"

"Oh, well, the human form is very, I mean, that's traditional, isn't it?" She thought of the nude statue that she and Laverne had once bought and then sold to Edna, who thought it looked like her first ski instructor.

"Yeah. I've done some nudes in my classes, but I mean what do you think about my becoming a nude model?"

"Oh." This was not exactly the "cake girl" talk she had once dreaded and which she couldn't imagine having with Kitty, even fifteen or twenty years from now, but it was probably as close as she was going to get these days. "Well, can you tell me more about it?"

"It'd be a paid gig and easier than waiting tables, as long as I can stand still for an hour."

"But won't you feel self-conscious being naked, I mean nude, in front of all those people?"

"It's not like I'm becoming a Chippendale's dancer. Or posing for _Cosmo_ like Uncle Lenny."

She was glad he couldn't see her blush. She had once admitted to briefly "dating" Lenny, "after your papa's death and before Lenny was famous." But that confession was after Squiggy had told then-fifteen-year-old Wally, "I had your mutter when we was single, Kid, and she's a good— a good woman."

Wally now continued, "I've got a decent body, so it wouldn't be indecent. But if it would upset you, I won't."

"I'm just processing the data." For one thing, this was her little boy, and she still thought of him as in diapers sometimes, or maybe as a six-year-old with a cowlick and missing teeth. But she knew he was in fact a grown but not very tall man, not unlike Walter, Sr.

He chuckled. "OK. I'm glad you're not having a meltdown over it like Mr. Masciarelli did on the episode where Penny wanted to pose for _Playhouse_." Fourteen-year-old Wally had watched that week because he had a major crush on Carrie Fisher.

"Oh God, I can just imagine Mr. DeFazio's reaction if Tracy became a nude model!"

"My reaction would be more in the hand-biting category."

"That's not funny, Wally."

"Ma, she grew up to be a very pretty girl, with Aunt Laverne's eyes but not her teeth."

"Um, have you seen much of Tracy lately?"

"Nah, not since I gave her the tour of Boston that you insisted on last fall. It's a big city and we don't have much in common."

"Oh." Shirley had always hoped her firstborn and Laverne's would hit it off but they had more of a teasing, bickering, not quite sibling-like relationship when they saw each other every few years. And now that Tracy was at Wellesley College, half an hour from Wally's Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Shirley had thought they would spend more time together.

"Anyway, I gotta go but give Kitty an extra birthday hug from me and tell Richie I'll beat him up if he hurts my poor old widowed mother."

Shirley couldn't help laughing. "OK, Sonny Boy, and wear a sweater, except when you're modeling."


	7. Lincoln's Birthday

"You know what I really hate about Valentine's Day, Aunt Laverne?"

Laverne took the pins out of her mouth not only so she could reply but because she knew she was going to have a hard time not laughing. "No, Moth, what?"

Monica Theodora Squiggman crossed her arms over the words "YEAR OF THE DRAGON" covering her still flat chest. "In grade school, you gotta get cards for your whole class. But Valentine's Day is about love. I ain't in love with thirty people. I don't even like most of 'em. You multiply that by seven, from kindergarten to sixth grade, factor in some of the same faces poppin' up year after year, and you're still talkin' sixty to seventy-five random people I'm fakin' a deep emotional connection to, with corny puns and cartoon characters!"

Josie started giggling at the younger girl's rant.

Laverne grinned but warned, "Careful, Josie, your seams aren't done."

"And look at you, Jo, getting all dressed up to go to a dance, not two months after that creep Tommy Milligan stomped on your heart." She stomped her child's Size Six motorcycle boot for emphasis, but also like she would kick Tommy's ass if she ever saw him again.

Josie didn't cry. She was used to Moth. "Jason's just a friend, from the tech crew."

"See? That proves my point. Valentine's Day is full of crap. And then there's Washington's Birthday!"

Before Moth could get going on that holiday, four middle-schoolers came in, said hello, and grabbed every snack they could find in the kitchen. Moth uncrossed her arms, told Josie, "Have fun tomorrow night," and followed the adventurers to the bedroom of the half-orc bard.

Laverne went back to being dressmaker, but this time she kept the pins in the cushion on her wrist. This might be a good chance for a mother-daughter talk, now that they were alone. (Jak and Lilly were watching Nickelodeon in the living room, and Lenny was spending a lot of time at the recording studio lately.)

"Moth is a funny kid," Laverne said as she worked on the hem. Josie loved this pink dress but she'd grown an inch and gained five pounds since New Year's.

"She's smart, too, much smarter than Uncle Squiggy."

Laverne bit back an insult and said, "Yeah, I didn't know all that stuff about Abe Lincoln."

"Do you think maybe I'm dating too soon after the break-up?"

Laverne looked up at that sweet, troubled face. She didn't have favorites, but Josie was something special, and not just because she'd been a great baker ever since she and Pop first made a pizza together. 

"Well, I don't want you eloping with Jason on the rebound, but Tracy's right. You need to get out and have fun."

"I really thought I was in love with Tommy, and he was in love with me. It's like I can't even trust my own heart or brain anymore."

"I know, Honey, I dated a lot of guys before your dad and I didn't always make the best choices. It makes you doubt yourself. And even with your dad, well, we loved each other, still kind of do, but it just wasn't meant to be for death did us part."

"When Randy Carpenter died...," Josie said softly, but Laverne still flinched. Josie patted her mother's shoulder but continued, "Did you stop dating for awhile?"

Laverne tried not to be offended that her daughter was comparing a high-school romance to one of the most tragic losses of her life. She still remembered what it was like to be sixteen and heartbroken, and she'd had a tough outer shell, unlike Gutsy's middle daughter. She also knew that Shirley had told Tracy and Josie about Randy when they asked questions after that one _Penny and Cindy_ episode Laverne couldn't watch eight years ago, or since. It was hard enough reading the "Close Up" capsule in _TV Guide: "Tuesday at 8:30 p.m.,_ Penny and Cindy. _When Penny's occasional boyfriend, Officer Robert 'Bo' Kaprall, gets shot in the line of duty, it's up to Penny's friends and father to get her through this difficult time...."_ (When Laverne went to the twenty-fifth-year high-school reunion the next year, Norman Hughes's sister-in-law Cookie said he wasn't thrilled about that episode either.)

"I mean, I think the next time Penny had a date, it was right before they all moved to Hawaii and they'd skipped ahead three years."

Laverne wished it was that simple in real life. She'd had to let the days, weeks, and months pass before she could risk her heart again. "I dated, but I didn't fall in love again for a long time."

"How many times have you been in love?"

"Definitely less than sixty or seventy-five."

For once, Josie didn't laugh. "I want to know, Mom, because part of me believes in one true soulmate, and part of me knows that you fell in love with Dad enough to get married and have me, Tracy, and Frankie, but I also have seen how crazy you are about Lenny."

"Oh, Honey, every love is different. You will fall in love again, probably a bunch of times, with better guys than Tommy. But it's OK to just date and have fun, too."

"Do you think Aunt Shirley will start dating in another year or two? I mean, I know she went out with Uncle Squiggy and some other men when Wally was little, before she got back together with Uncle Carmine."

How could Laverne have produced a child who was still so innocent at sixteen and a half? Even Shirley hadn't been that innocent in The Fifties. Laverne didn't know how serious things might get with Richie, but should she prepare Josie now?

"Well, maybe. If she meets someone special."

Josie nodded. "I know Carmine was her first love, and he was so sweet to her, but I think she can find someone to make her happy again."

Laverne knew Tracy would've had a more cynical take, and Laverne herself knew Carmine's flaws better than anyone, much as she missed him. Still, Laverne was glad that Tommy Milligan hadn't destroyed Josie's belief in love.

"Hey, Mrs. K, you got any Valentine's candy yet?" Rodrigo Sanchez asked, poking his head back into the kitchen.

"Next week, Rigo, after it goes on sale."

The dwarf ranger didn't question why the wife of a rock star economized, but he did look disappointed.

Josie carefully stepped off of the stool and out of her party dress. "I'll bake some cookies," she promised, putting her apron on over her sweatsuit.

"Slammin'!" the thirteen-year-old exclaimed and then ran to share the news in The Cave.

"Slammin'?" Laverne waited for the older teen to translate, sort of like three-year-old Tracy had interpreted the baby's babbles to the confused parents.

"You know, like jammin', only better."

Laverne nodded and went to go watch _The Noozles,_ because the pink dress could wait and she was in the mood for magical talking koala bears.


	8. Valentine's Day

Richie showed up at Shirley's door a slushy day in mid-February with a bouquet of flowers and a giraffe.

"Oo, how cute!" she squealed, remembering her father, and then her brothers and lastly Carmine, winning her stuffed animals, from Boo Boo Kitty in 1942 to a tiger at a Brooklyn street fair in 1960.

"I noticed Kitty didn't have any giraffes."

Of course, it was for her little girl, not her. "That was so thoughtful, Richard. Let's take it to her upstairs."

They went up to Kitty's room, he still carrying the bouquet, while Shirley had the giraffe.

Kitty was playing school again, this time with her chalkboard covered with scribbles that apparently represented the alphabet.

"Kitty, look, what Mr. Cunningham brought you!" It felt funny to call him that, but he was old enough to be the preschooler's grandfather.

("If Jak was a geriatric pregnancy for you at forty-three," the doctor had asked her best friend, "what would they call this?" Squiggy had answered before Laverne could, "Revenge of the Mummy's Womb," which was surprisingly clever for him.)

Kitty walked over, took the toy, mumbled thanks, and put the stuffy in the corner, its long spotted face looking at the circus wallpaper. "Giwaffe was wunning awound when I was talking."

"Bad giraffe," Richie scolded, but Kitty didn't laugh or even nod. She just went back to scribbling on the board.

"Dinner will be ready soon, Sweetie. Richie, let's go put the flowers in water."

Richie followed Shirley back downstairs but then he said, "I'll go get my bag out of the car." He handed her the bouquet.

She nodded and went into the kitchen. First she checked on the stew, and then she found a vase for the flowers. He'd given her white, pink, and red roses, maybe because of the holiday, but they would've been lovely any time. She got the largest vase, tried not to think of how it was a wedding present about ten years ago, filled it with water, and arranged the flowers as best she could.

Richie smiled when he came in. "This is nice."

It did feel very domestic. She went over and kissed his cheek. "Thank you for the beautiful bouquet."

"Thank you for having me again. Uh, I mean."

They both blushed. Why were they like this, at their age? If Laverne were a widow, God forbid, and interested in Richie, she would've just called him Red and bantered him into bed. But Laverne and Richie weren't really each other's type, and they would never have wanted anything serious with each other.

Having yearly one-night stands in the early '70s had been relatively simple for Shirley, especially since two of the men had wanted her for approximately fifteen years. Even Lenny was easy to "lair into her lure," as Squiggy would put it much later. Lenny was single, vulnerable, and horny, but then so was she, although she would never have put it that way. The three encounters had long-ranging consequences, but getting into them took very little effort. Besides, things were different in the early '70s and they were all younger then.

She backed away. "Um, how's Chuck doing?"

Richie sighed and shook his head. "It's rough. He and Bill have been together for years. They did break up briefly a couple years ago, and Bill had unprotected sex. But he and Chuck used condoms after they got back together. I mean when he was still well enough to— I'm sorry, I know this is a lot of personal stuff to just drop on you."

"Richie, it's fine. I'm a doctor." She didn't tell him that it was much less embarrassing than if they were discussing Richie's love life, or her own. "But I do feel sorry for both men."

"Yeah, besides all that Bill is going through, he blames himself. And Chuck hates seeing him suffer."

"Do they have a good support system?"

"Well, AIDS has hit the community really hard, and they've lost good friends in New York and elsewhere."

"What about your parents? How have they reacted?"

He sighed. "Well, they're more tolerant than they were thirty years ago, but I wouldn't exactly say they're welcoming."

"Stew?"

Shirley hadn't heard her daughter come in. "Yes, Sweetie, the stew is ready."

Richie set the table and then Shirley served the stew and bread. She had cooked chunks of beef separately, which she now scooped into Richie's bowl. She occasionally did that for Carmine, but Kitty seemed to have no memory of it, since she looked as if they were performing a bizarre ritual in front of her.

"It's just a little treat for our guest."

"Me eat?"

"No, not until you have big-girl teeth."

Kitty pouted.

The three of them ate in awkward silence, until Richie asked about the big calendar on the wall. Shirley prompted her daughter to talk about it, but Kitty ignored them both and stuffed her mouth full of bread. So Shirley explained that it was an art project, where every child at daycare would make a small picture for each holiday and then bring it home to add to their calendar. "...There are a lot of holidays in February, especially since they count Lincoln's Birthday, Washington's Birthday, and Presidents' Day. And I think the Chinese New Year is this week, too."

"Yeah, the Year of the Dragon. I'm a Dragon."

"Oh, I'm a Tiger, but Laverne is an Ox because she was born in January. Wally is a Monkey and Kitty is a Rat."

"I'm not a wat!" Kitty cried defiantly.

Shirley didn't want to explain astrology, so she said, "Of course not, Sweetheart, it's just a game grown-ups play."

After dinner, Shirley took Kitty upstairs to brush her teeth and get her ready for bed. Richie meanwhile fed and walked Nanna.

After Shirley kissed her daughter goodnight and turned off the light, she wondered if she should change into something more elegant than Carmine's cast T-shirt for _Sunday in the Park with George_ and her pre-pregnancy jeans. This wasn't turning out to be a very romantic Valentine's Day so far, bouquet aside. Then again, Richie knew what he was getting into with her, right?

When she went down to the living room, she grinned at the sight of her St. Bernard sprawled and slumbering on the couch, as the man watched TV from the armchair.

"Looks like you've lost the guest bed."

"It's OK. I'll let her nap until I'm sleepy."

"Or you could sleep with me." Richie stared at her and she blushed. "I mean, not, well, we could go to bed together but not do everything."

"Hugging and kissing?"

"That would be nice."

He smiled. "It would." He stood up, turned off the TV, grabbed his overnight bag, and followed her up to her bedroom. He didn't get into bed though but sat in her windowseat.

She went over to the dresser, pulled out her long white nightgown with pink tulips and yellow daisies, smiled sheepishly, and silently left the room, quietly closing the door behind her. It was far too soon in the relationship to change in front of him. Maybe it was too soon to share a bed, but she wanted to, and not just because it was a New England winter night.

She looked in the mirror after she'd changed, all her clothes of the day in the laundry hamper except her white, sensible panties. The nightgown was also sensible, warm and modest, with a high neckline and low hem. She of course owned sexy little nighties, gifts from when Carmine kept her warm at night. But she would've felt funny wearing them with Richie, or anyone else.

When she returned to her room, Richie was sitting up in bed, wearing his plaid pajamas. He smiled and said, "You're still a very pretty girl, I mean woman."

She smiled and said, "You're pretty cute yourself." Then she shut the door, got under the covers, and kissed him on the lips.

There was always something different about kissing in bed, even sitting up, because it was bed, and it was easy to keep going. But she and Richie had agreed they weren't going to rush this, physically or emotionally. And they both enjoyed making out for its own sake.

The kiss lengthened and deepened. She was still getting used to his mustache tickling her face, but she liked it. And his lips and tongue were warm and sweet against hers.

His hands were a little cold on her hair and she wondered if she should suggest they get under the covers. But then he shifted into necking, and she hadn't necked in months.

She felt a little unfaithful to Carmine, but she thought he would understand. Not that her late husband didn't get jealous and sometimes even possessive when he was alive, but she believed he'd want her to be happy. Yes, it did feel strange to be in this bed with another man, but maybe no stranger than having Richie sit in Carmine's kitchen chair.

She tried to concentrate on how good it felt, his lips on her neck, his breath near her ear.

Her eyes were closed, so she didn't see the door open. And Richie's "Would you like...?" covered up the slow creak. But her eyes popped open when she heard, "Mommy, nightmay! Man on Daddy pillow!!" Then Kitty started screaming hysterically.

Shirley felt both annoyed and amused, but she knew she had to comfort her daughter. While Richie stopped necking but looked uncertain whether to get out of bed, Shirley got up and went to her small child. Even though Kitty usually didn't want to be touched when she was having a meltdown, Shirley scooped her up and let her darling girl cry on her shoulder. She carried her into Kitty's room and sat in the rocking chair. She rocked her baby and stroked the short, Carmine-black curls, even after the sobs subsided.

"Sweetness, do you want to tell me about your bad dream?"

"Big bugs," was all Kitty would or could tell her.

Shirley thought of how frustrating it must be to not yet have the vocabulary to express all your thoughts. She'd learned to understand her patients, not in a Dr. Dolittle sort of way, but reading their body language, as well as their barks, meows, neighs, moos, etc. She soothed Kitty as best she could, telling her that the big bugs weren't real and that Mama was here.

Kitty fell silent and then suddenly asked, "Why man in bed?"

If Kitty were Wally's age, Shirley could've talked about the decades of attraction and bad timing. If Kitty were ten or even five, Shirley could tell her that sometimes when grown-ups really like each other, they go to bed together. If Kitty were a year old, the question wouldn't even come up.

"Mr. Cunningham is Mama's special friend and we like to kiss." Shirley hoped Kitty wouldn't ask why the kissing had happened in bed.

"Oh. Mama and Papa kiss." It wasn't said accusingly, but more as if Kitty was processing data. Shirley felt like crying at the present tense. Then Kitty said, "Sleep now."

Shirley tucked her in and kissed her forehead. She couldn't be angry at her angel baby, even when Kitty wasn't acting angelic. Yes, it was clear that Kitty hadn't warmed up to Richie, but this must be a confusing time for a child who had lost her father before she was three.

"Woof!"

Shirley looked over at the doorway and interpreted that bark as "I'm sorry I was sleeping on the job, but I'll look after our little girl now. You go talk to your fella, but don't go too wild tonight."

Shirley went over, patted Nanna on the head, and murmured, "Goodnight, Good Dog." Then she returned to her own bedroom, planning to lock it this time.

Richie was gone, as was his bag. Shirley curled up in her windowseat, determined not to panic, or cry.

It was possible that Richie was driving back to Vermont, in a blend of anger and frustration, but that wasn't really his style. Richie tended to be more confrontational in his anger, although he wouldn't tell her, and certainly not Kitty, "Listen, Bucko!"

Shirley didn't hear water running, so it was unlikely that Richie was taking a cold shower. And it wasn't as if they'd gotten that far in the makeout.

She suddenly remembered a story that Laverne had told her. It happened in the fall of '76, although Shirley didn't hear about it until months later, because it was an embarrassing story and the two women were estranged over Lenny soon after the incident occurred. Laverne's three children had welcomed the new-to-them man in her life in varying degrees. Frankie was a mellow toddler who didn't know what terrible twos were, and he and Lenny immediately bonded over dinosaurs and Bosco, and later videogames and music. Seven-year-old Tracy had matchmade her mom with the Count of Rock at the recent high school reunion, but then had doubts about someone other than her daddy in their home. These days, the college freshman seemed to view her stepfather with a mixture of affection and amusement, especially since he'd given Laverne two geriatric pregnancies.

The other "yenta" had been all in on the matchmaking scheme and never wavered. She was as much a Disney-loving romantic at sixteen as at five. While continuing to adore her father, she believed fervently in her mother's second marriage. She doted on her half-siblings, and for weeks after John Lennon was murdered, the nine-year-old had nightmares that "they're coming for Lenny next!"

It was Josie who wet the bed when Laverne and Lenny were semi-skinny-dipping in her backyard pool. Laverne admitted to being topless. It was foolish and irresponsible, and very Laverne. So Shirley had scolded but laughed, until Laverne played the "Josie would be a bold Leo instead of a worrywart Cancer if you hadn't made me go into premature labor by humping Squiggy" card. Shirley did feel bad for that poor little girl, who was in some ways more like Shirley than Kitty would turn out to be. (Moth meanwhile was unmistakably Squiggy's daughter.) It wasn't easy to date as a single parent, but it wasn't easy for the children either.

She reminded herself that Richie was a single parent, too, although his sons were grown and had lived with their mother, as his step-nieces and -nephews had lived with their aunt (and the housekeeper and the random boarder). She knew he'd be waiting for her on the couch. They'd talk about how to make this work, from whether she should lock her door the next time he stayed over to whether she should get an overnight sitter so they could go to a hotel.

Richie looked up and half-smiled at her as she came down the last steps. "Happy Valentine's Day, Shirley."

She sat down next to him, drew Wally's comforter around them, rested her head on his shoulder, and whispered, "Happy Valentine's Day, Richard."

They cuddled and watched _It Happened One Night_ on cable until the end. Then she kissed him and went back to bed.


End file.
